


Sutures

by DailyDaves



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Abuse, Memoir, Munchausen by proxy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-02 23:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DailyDaves/pseuds/DailyDaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A reflection. Sometimes you don't know it was abuse until it's already over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is taken from the beginning of my memoir.

 

“No one’s going to believe you’re sick if you look like that.”

I’m six. I’m in first grade at a well-accredited elementary school in Naperville, a large suburb just outside of Chigaco. I’m six, and I’ve been in the anti-septic smelling doctor’s office more than I’ve sat in a desk in the warm classroom of my school. I know the feeling of the uncomfortable examination table better than I know the hard plastic seat of my desk, and I know the hard face of my doctor, one of the many, better than I know the faces and voices of my classmates and teachers.

I bounced my legs up and down as I sat in the plush chair beside the doctor’s desk. My mother leaned against the examination table across from me, arms crossed, glaring at me with her mouth set into a thin frown. I stop bouncing my legs, instead taking on a pose I’d done so many times before—droopy eyes, let-down shoulders, the corners of my mouth dropping to complete the look of a sickly, pitiful girl.

“That’s better. Now she’ll have a look at you,” My mother told me, frown transforming into a proud smile before she returned to the magazine she put on the examination table behind her.

I turned my gaze to the wide window to my right, looking out at the street below and the blooms of spring, not even daring to think about how I’d rather be out there than stuck in here, waiting for my doctor to come in and examine me. It was a feeling I’d never shared with my mother, since she was so concerned for my health. I’d been to multiple doctors in the past few years, all of them sending me off with simple explanations of allergies or the common cold. This doctor, though, helped. She listened to my mother and did as she asked and constantly promised again and again that she’d find out what was going on.

Mostly, I was dreading the inevitable strep test. God, did I hate that test. I honestly considered it worse than any needles they could stick in me. I was used to those. There was no way to get used to the strep test, as I found out from very early on.

The room was filled with the sounds of my mother flipping the pages of her magazine, tearing certain ones out and sticking them into her purse. I alternated between watching her and watching outside the window, envying everyone I saw out there. I felt fine. My mother had felt my head this morning and told me I was burning up, immediately calling the doctor and scheduling an urgent appointment for later that day, calling the school right after and informing them that I wouldn’t be coming in later.

I knew that most kids would rejoice at the prospect of a day off of school, but I didn’t. I wanted to see my friends and I wanted to play soccer at recess and I wanted to yell at Ross for getting me in trouble the previous day. I didn’t want to be here. I knew what was going to happen: my mother was going to tell them everything that was wrong with me and demand more tests to be run on me. The doctor would listen and I’d be sent downstairs for labs, where they’d surely stick a swab down my throat to test for a virus I knew I didn’t have.

My head was filled with maybes. Maybe my mom would let me go back to school in the afternoon. Maybe they’d finally figure out what was wrong with me. Maybe they’d tell my mom nothing was wrong. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

My heart jumped when I heard the telltale knock at the door. My doctor always knocked twice. A second later, the door opened, revealing the familiar tall woman with long blonde hair. A man followed her in, his nametag telling me he was a student training under my doctor. I’d been seeing her for about six months and she greeted me warmly, smiling, her voice taking on the comforting tone of a pediatrician, “Hello, Cheyenne. What’s going on?”

My mother cleared her throat and my doctor looked at her, the both of them exchanging familiar friendly smiles. She spoke in my place, as she always did, “She ran a fever this morning and she was coughing last night and had a runny nose when she woke up.”

The doctor sat down on her stool next to me, tapping away at her computer, and I watched as she spelled the words that I would see written all over my medical records thirteen years later.

_Mother states that—_

_  
_

__  
  


“She has the West Nile Virus.”

I was tired. I just wanted to go to bed. Mom had kept me up the entire night, insisting that I could not sleep. My head felt heavy and my eyelids were burning as they threatened to slip shut. I couldn’t seem to think correctly, every thought pushed back by a thick cloud of fog. All I wanted to do was sleep and rest my throbbing, aching head.

“She certainly does have the fever for it. Has she been in contact with anyone with the virus? Are there any mosquito bites on her?”

I whined as the doctor shone a bright light in my eyes, whimpering and pulling away. I rubbed at my already aching eyes, drawing my knees to my chest and locking my arms around them so the doctor couldn’t get to me. I was six and it was 2003 and there was a wide-spread panic of the mosquito-borne virus; I’d heard of it on the news and so far, there’d been two cases in my county. At the time, the virus was still new and unknown and was considered to be extremely deadly and possibly contagious. My mother had definitely caught onto the panic, latching onto it like a leech finding a new food source.

I _was_ sick. It was fall, though, and I was allergic to just about everything I did, especially jumping into piles of dead leaves. My dad would rake them up and then I would jump into them, landing with giggles into the crunchy pillows of the leaves. I knew I was allergic—I always had been—but that wasn’t going to stop me from jumping into piles of leaves. This was also around the time that I began to outgrow my strange allergic reaction to things. When I was in preschool and kindergarten, I’d break out into bright red hives that neither itched nor hurt when I came into contact with allergens. I was around six when I finally outgrew that and started having a normal allergic reaction—the type that mimics a cold.

Or maybe I just had a cold. That was a possibility, too. I got sick a lot in the fall because I played with everyone at school, regardless if they were sick or not. I had a slight fever and I was achy, but not much more than that. At least, it hadn’t been much more than that until my mom caught wind of it. Suddenly, I didn’t have a normal cold or the flu. She refused to let me sleep, spending hours and hours looking up the symptoms for West Nile Virus.

“Yes,” My mother answered, shooting me a glare as I curled up into a tight ball on the table.

My doctor looked up from her clipboard, fixing my mother with a glance instead of directing her questions to me, “Which?”

“Both,” Mom shot back immediately. “One of the kids at school got it, I think. And, well, you know how she is. She plays with everyone. And god, Mary, have you seen her body? She’s covered in mosquito bites! We had a barbeque the night before last and—like I said, you know how she is, that girl—she refused to put on bug spray! And now she’s suddenly all sick!”

Doctor Mary was shaking her head slowly, jotting a few more things down on the papers she had on her clipboard. She took a moment to read over them before sighing and giving my mother a look of sadness, her voice heavy as she spoke again, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to admit her. I’m so sorry, Lori. We’re going to get your daughter the best care we possibly can. Can you take her to the ER or would you like me to call an ambulance?”

I was young, but I could catch the slight smile on my mother’s lips. She didn’t seem the least bit sad or worried, and she only laid a hand in my hair, stroking it slowly, all with that smile on her lips as she looked down at me, “I can take her.”

 

 

“Have you heard of Munchausen by Proxy?”

Thirteen years later, I’m sitting with my dad in the car on the way home from the library. It’s night, pitch black having fallen around us.

The child me and the eighteen year-old me are night and day. I’ve been through hell and back. I’m no longer Cheyenne, the tiny innocent girl. I’m Dave, and I’m falling apart at the seams after years of abuse and neglect. I don’t know who Cheyenne is anymore. She seems like a shell I’ve left behind, someone I’ve abandoned. She took a part of myself with her, and I’m no longer whole, and as she died, that part of me died as well.

I’m not completely sure what killed her. I’m unsure where along the line I abandoned her. I don’t know where she decided she’d had enough and let herself waste away and die. Cheyenne and Dave do not co-exist. There’s not two parts of me; there’s one. There’s just two versions of me—Cheyenne, the past, and Dave, the present. I’m not who I was, and that person is long dead.

And there’s no point in beating a dead dog. Or a dead child, for that matter.

My stepmother and half-brother have gone to visit my step-grandmother in Indiana for the weekend, leaving my dad and I alone. It’s really the first time we’ve spent a weekend alone together since my stepmother moved in and definitely the first time since I returned to live with them, having freshly turned eighteen, and subsequently completely broke down.

I’m learning to drive again. My dad sits in the passenger’s seat, trying to glance through all the CD’s he’s checked out from our weekly library trip, squinting at them in the dark. I’m pretty confident at the wheel now, but not comfortable to take the driving test yet, despite being a full-fledged adult.

My dad looks up from his CD-reading and fixes me with a slightly confused look, “No, what’s that?”

Which surprises me. Because my dad has always been the smartest person in my life, even now, _especially_ now, after I’ve learned that parents are not perfect and always-right but instead human beings. He knows a little about everything and he loves medical shit, _how could he not know what Munchausen is?_

“It’s when—” I trail off for a moment, staring ahead of me at the road, trying to find the right words. It’s been hard for me to find the right words, the right sayings, the right sentences, ever since my brain chemistry went completely haywire after I moved back in with my dad. I know why it is, too, and it doesn’t make it any better. I’m in a safe place now; it’s okay to break down. It wasn’t before. I was trying to survive.

My dad’s patient with me, just like he always is. He waits through the awkward beat of silence that falls between us, per usual.

“It’s when parents make their kids sick because they want the attention.”

My dad stops, nearly dropping his bag of CDs, and I know exactly what’s on his mind. It’s on my mind, too. Which is why I brought it up in the first place.

“—Yeah,” My dad starts out, drawing the words slowly. “Yeah. I’ve heard of that. I just didn’t know that was how you pronounced it.”

“My mom—”

I point out the pink elephant between us, forcing him to notice it. Forcing myself to notice it.

“Yeah,” He repeats. I almost want to change the subject, because I know what’s coming next before he says anything and I don’t want to hear it, “Your mom was abusive way before you moved in with her. I’m sorry.”

It’s the same words I’ve said to myself a hundred million times, and it still doesn’t stop me from wondering how I couldn’t have seen it, how I idolized her, how I didn’t know she would continue to abuse and neglect me when I moved in with her for high school.

It’s over, but to me, they’re still wounds without sutures.

 


	2. Friends

 

                Long before I was ever a victim, I was a bystander, a witness.

                Child abuse was a myth that didn’t affect me. It was something I learned about in health class, something I saw on TV, on the news, but nothing that ever even came close to wrapping me in its greedy arms. I lived in a high-end, pompous suburb, where every family was a nuclear family with two children and a steady income. Child abuse and poverty were unheard of.

                Except, I had this friend. I met her in fourth grade, and we bonded by walking home together, since our routes were the same about two-thirds of the way. Her name was Casey and she was the coolest person I’d ever met. We quickly became best friends, and soon, I wasn’t just walking home with her. I’d go over to her house after school and as we progressed to middle school, I would walk a full mile just so I could ride the bus with her. Because we were such close friends, I learned about her situation.

                At the time, she was the poorest person I knew. She lived in a dirty townhouse with her three siblings, her dad, who worked hard to put food on the table, and her mother, who was unemployed but throwing every ounce of determination into becoming a nurse. They lived on the bad part of Naperville, which I can only describe as the ‘ghetto’ of the town. It was where everyone who wasn’t white or Asian lived, because in Naperville, people saw anyone outside of those two races as dirty and lower than low. Casey and her family happened to be Native American, and through them, my stereotyping was put to rest.

                Casey’s family was the first dose of poverty for me. I didn’t understand. How could they not have money? Were they lazy? How could they not have enough money for food? Poverty wasn’t a thing that was real to me. I didn’t understand the poverty cycle. It was bizzare to me, and the only explanation in my mind was that somehow, someway, it was their own fault that they didn’t have money. They must be lazy, I thought, because that was the only thing I could think of that would’ve caused this.

                There’s one day that sticks out in my mind of being friends with Casey. It was the summer between eighth grade and freshman year at high school. I was busy getting ready to move in with my mother for high school. Casey invited me over to her house for a sleepover. I’d always known Casey had a strained relationship with her father—it was just something I accepted. They always seemed to be arguing about something and her father just seemed rather strict to me. Nothing more.

                Casey was a photographer. She’d saved up and bought herself a DSLR camera. There was nothing she loved more than taking photos, and she was rightfully proud of the photos she took. She had a way of capturing people in their element and she was dedicated.

                “Can I see some of the photos you took?” I asked her that night, and her grin was all I needed as an answer. She loved showing off her photos, and I loved looking at them. Like her, I liked seeing people in their element, and Casey’s was photography. The only difference was that I didn’t have a camera to capture that look people got in their eyes.

                I scrolled through the photos on her camera, admiring them and telling her what I liked about them. This went on for a few moments until I came across a photo that immediately looked out of place. It was Casey herself, a mirror photo. This was years before mirror photos and selfies gained popularity, and Casey wasn’t one to photograph herself. Other people, sure. But not herself. It wasn’t even a normal photo of her. No, in this photo, she was beat-up, with a black eye and a bloody nose.

                I found myself staring at the photo, my mind stalling to attempt to figure out how to process it. It was like a loading animation on a computer—my reaction couldn’t be found immediately. My fingers hovered over the silver buttons of the camera in my hands and Casey had fallen silent, and I’d realized that I was never supposed to see this photo. It wasn’t for my eyes. But I had, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

                My brain was searching for an explanation. I didn’t understand what was on the screen. Casey with a black eye and bloody nose? That couldn’t happen. And then, suddenly, my brain found an explanation and it was falling out of my mouth before I could even think.

                “Damn, that’s some good makeup! Where’d you learn to do those special effects?”

                I don’t know why, but apparently, the explanation of costume makeup made more sense than the actual, logical conclusion right in front of me. I wouldn’t have gotten it if it wrapped itself around me and bit me. Casey, in response, gave me a puzzled look, raising an eyebrow and narrowing her eyes at me.

                “That’s not makeup?” It was a question—as if she couldn’t believe what I’d just said to her. Now, I can understand her reaction. I was a sheltered white girl, who came from an upper middle-class family, who had no understanding of poverty or child abuse other than the shallow reaches of health class. She went on, keeping a straight face and a flat, unfeeling tone, “My dad did that to me.”

                What I remember most about this entire encounter are those few words. I remember what they were and how she said them to me, as if they didn’t affect her, as if that girl on the camera’s screen was someone else. What’s even more surreal is the feeling I had afterwards, a solid rush of emotion and confusion. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Parents didn’t hit their kids. They didn’t beat them. That was all just something made up to scare kids in a middle school health class. I didn’t know how to react, because in my mind, it was something I’d already crossed off. It was just—impossible. There was no reaction from me. I knew I should be concerned and I was. I just didn’t know how to show it, and I wanted to make it stop, to help Casey, but for the first time, I had no idea what I could do.

                So all I did was offer a shocked, “I’m sorry.”

 

 

                When I think back to that day, I partially understand other people’s reactions to what happened to me. Partially. Part of me will never forgive them. I don’t think I ever can. Not completely. No matter how much I understand them, no matter how many lectures I go to on the bystander theory and cycle of abuse, no matter how many times I remember that night with Casey, I will never, ever forgive them for just watching as I as abused.

                It might very well be selfish. There were a lot of people who overlooked what was happening to me, from school counselors, teachers, friends, and child services officials, and it feels selfish to say that I’ll never be able to completely forgive them, but it’s the unfortunate truth.

                But the fact of the matter is that I do understand them. I understand their lack of action. I understand what they did and didn’t do.

                On that night with Casey, I never considered the possibility that I’d someday be a victim of abuse, nor did I ever think I would be in a state of poverty. It’s surreal to think about it now, because I don’t remember that girl I was back them, sheltered and unburdened. Everything’s changed since then. It’s really hard for me to believe that there was ever a time I lived without mental illness or the shadow of my mother hanging over me, because that’s all I remember now. That girl is a separate person from me.

                People change. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard the saying ‘people don’t _really_ change’—Which is a bunch of actual bullshit. People do change. Some change more than others. I’ve changed a lot. I’ve changed my name, my gender, and my experiences have changed my personality. Then, there’s people like my mother. People who don’t change. People who won’t take criticism. People who refuse to see their wrongdoings. My mother and I are two opposite ends of a spectrum in every way possible. Whereas she’s someone who doesn’t change, who stays stuck in her mold, I’m someone who’s constantly changing.

                To not change is not to learn. That’s why history repeats itself, over and over again. My half-brother is still living with my mother and step-father and even though they’ve lost me and had to skip town, history continues to cycle. I see it every time I have even the slightest bit of contact with my mother’s side of the family. When I talk to her, my grandmother tells me about the way my step-father is treating my mother and half-brother. She tells me about how things haven’t changed. It does nothing but stress me out, because even though I’m a thousand miles—three states—away from them, I can see the cycle continuing over and over again. They haven’t changed. They didn’t learn from what they did to me and the consequences  that came from that.

                It’s been a little over a year now since I left. The day I got fed up with the abuse and neglect was March sixth, 2014. I spent March sixth, 2015 locked in a mental hospital on suicide watch. Recovery isn’t pretty. It isn’t a walk in the park. It isn’t easy or fun. It’s recovery and it’s long, painful, and terrible, but it’s necessary.

                I’m writing this as part of my recovery. I’m not writing it for anyone else. It’s for me. I’m writing this so I can get all my thoughts down and put my muddled mess of memories into a clear, coherent narrative. My head is a filthy room of thoughts, experiences, feelings, and disorders, and I’m writing this to make sense of it all, because that’s what I need.

                It’s not over yet. I still fight every day to try to help my brother. I’m still suffering. But this is part of recovery and I’m not going to give up on it yet.

 

                


	3. Hospital

                “Are you suicidal?”

                March 20th. That was my date. I was sitting across from the man on March third, 2015. On March sixth, 2014, I’d escaped my mother’s house. The anniversary was coming up, and I knew I was going to be spending it in a mental hospital.

                “Yes,” I said after a moment. I didn’t dare look at my stepmother or the man doing my evaluation. Instead, I studied the patterns on the floor, trying to make sense of the random lines on the carpet below my feet.

                “You’re actively suicidal? Right now?”

                I knew all the questions and I’d vowed that I wouldn’t lie. I nodded my head, slowly, and no words would form at my lips, no matter how much I begged them to. I just wanted to say something, anything. I didn’t want to go to inpatient, but I knew that was where I belonged. I was planning to kill myself before the end of the month and I wanted to think of a way to bring my mother down with me. I was a danger to myself and others. Even my therapist had recommended it, after all I could talk about in our twice a week sessions was killing myself.

                “I need a verbal answer,” The evaluator reminded me, as gently as he could.

                “Yes,” I whispered, my head still down as I counted the squares of carpet over and over again. I was being truthful—I had a plan and I wanted to die. I was willing to give inpatient a try, though, as much as I didn’t want to go. I had to. I was actively suicidal and the one year anniversary was coming up in a couple days. Everything was happening all at once and it was overwhelming to the point where I just wanted it to stop.

                To me, killing myself seemed like the most logical solution. It simply felt like I could not go on, as if there was no way in hell I could make it through this. All my life, I’d been able to envision myself doing certain things, taking certain choices. If I wanted something to happen and couldn’t envision it, it wouldn’t happen. It just wouldn’t. And right then, I couldn’t see myself living even another week. I wasn’t going to wait until the twentieth. If they didn’t admit me, I was going to go home and find some way to kill myself because that would mean I had exhausted all other options.

                “Thank you, Dave. I’ll be right back. We’re going to talk to the psychiatrist and then I’ll come back and tell you what we’re going to do.”

                I’ve been here once before. In September, when things came falling down around me. September was when I started to piece things together, and September was when the fragile structure of my head finally collapsed. I didn’t go to inpatient then. I went to an intensive outpatient program. This time it was different—this time I actually had a plan and intention.

                I nodded again; I knew what was going to happen. The evaluator got up from his seat, folded up the small desk, and left. I let myself glance at my step mother for the first time since we’d been led back into the evaluation rooms and she looked up at me from her phone. I could see the tears in her eyes, and they stung me, making my heart drop in my chest.

                I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was just a shell left over from years of abuse and neglect from my mother and step-father. That’s all I was. All I did was hurt the people around me. I couldn’t be happy. It wasn’t that I wanted to kill myself—it was that I _needed_ to. There were no other options in my head. That was the only solution because I just couldn’t stand being a victim anymore.

                It felt like that was what I boiled down to—a victim. Nothing more. All my good memories were buried underneath bad ones, overshadowed by them until I just couldn’t remember what it felt like to ever be happy. It wasn’t on my radar. Every day and night I tried to fight everything wrong that I’d learned during my abuse. I tried every day to fight the survival instincts, to just _feel_ normally again. That was my biggest problem. Feeling.

                There’d been a time when I felt nothing. And now I was feeling everything too much. My emotions were so unstable. My mind had forgotten how emotions worked and was suddenly trying to figure it out again, taking me on a daily rollercoaster ride of living hell.

                I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of being a victim. I was sick of being a statistic. I just wanted all the violent emotions to stop. I just didn’t want to be _me_ anymore. I was suicidal and I was so tired of fighting.

                That’s actually one of the first things you’re taught in therapy. Or at least, it is in DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy). Don’t fight. Let the emotions come and go as they please. DBT is all about letting the thoughts and feelings and everything exist, even if they come in conflict with one and other. It’s to not fight, to just drop the rope and let the other person continue to pull. Don’t struggle, just let things be.

                ‘It is what it is’ is the basis of radical acceptance, which is a therapy technique I’ve really struggled with. I’ve struggled because I keep fighting it. After all, who wants to feel suicidal all the time? My natural reaction is to fight, since I spent four years of my life doing just that. PTSD has a good way of fucking with your head and making everything boil down to fight or flight. It has a way of shutting off emotions and forcing pure adrenaline. It’s a primal survival technique that’s hard to shut off, even when the trauma has ultimately passed.

                Outside of my head, there was a knock on the door and then, the sound of the doorknob turning. The evaluation room suddenly felt more cramped as the man entered, carrying a clip board and a stack of papers. I knew what he was going to say before it ever came out of his mouth.

                “The doctor is recommending inpatient.”

                Immediately, my emotions went haywire. Part of me was angry; I didn’t want to go to inpatient. Another part of me was relieved, though, because it meant getting help I needed and because I’d be safe. Paranoia had a funny way of controlling my life and in the hospital, I knew I’d be safe from myself and anyone on the outside who could possibly hurt me, especially including my mother.

                “She won’t be able to get me here?” I asked quietly. It felt ridiculous to even say the words. My mother didn’t have the means to kidnap me. She didn’t have a car or the gas money or even money for a plane ticket. I was four states away. And yet, I was still convinced that she was going to attempt to hurt me. In fact, I was sure that she was waiting right there, in the waiting room, searching for me to take me away, just like in the nightmares I’d had.

                The evaluator looked me right in the eyes and smiled, “The only people who can see or talk to you are the people who have your number code.”

                I sat back and sighed, relieved. Paranoia was a strange thing. It defied all rules and limitations of logic. There was no way my mother could get to me, but my mind put her right out there in the waiting room. Hearing the words from the evaluator’s mouth calmed my nerves a bit, forcing them to relax.

                “I need you to sign here, Dave,” He began reading me my rights—just the basic things, about the laws regarding my stay in the hospital and what I could and couldn’t do. It felt like a dream when I finally picked up the pen and signed my birthname on all the sheets he pointed to. _This is it_ , was all I could think. I was really going to inpatient. I was going to allow myself to be locked up in the hospital. It sucked, but, God, I needed help. I couldn’t live like this anymore.

                “Any questions?”

                “How long will I be here?” I asked after a moment of thought, my voice barely a whisper. I’d just signed my rights away and I’d soon be locked up in what I envisioned to be a prison-like hospital. I’d heard stories of people who were institutionalized. Horror stories.

                “The typical stay,” He started out. “Is three to seven days.”

                That was a wide range. Immediately, I started to wonder why some people stayed as few as three days and why others stayed as many as a week. I wondered where I’d fall on the scale.

                “Okay,” I finally agreed.

 

 

                The three of us walked back to the waiting room. My footsteps were slow and I still focused on the patterns on the floor. My step-mother puts her arm around me and pulls me against her side. I tried not to walk quickly, knowing that this would be the last time I’d see the outside world until I was discharged. My step-mother would be leaving. She’d be going home to sleep in her own bed. Me, on the other hand—I’d be led through those heavy double doors at the end of the hall and I’d be processed through an unfamiliar place and told to sleep in an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar people all around me.

                I was scared. I was fucking terrified. I didn’t want this. I knew it was the best for me, but that didn’t make it any better. It didn’t make the walk to pick up our stuff from the locker any easier. It was by far the longest walk of my life. We exited the evaluation room and picked our way to the waiting room, where our coats and bags were locked up in a locker. Down the hall, I could see the nurses’ station, where all the evaluators talked with the on-call doctor on where to send patients. There were eight other evaluation rooms, all set up the same way, with the fold down desk and couch and chair arrangement. The waiting room was at one end of the hall. At the end opposite it was two huge metal doors. My step-mother would be led through the waiting room and outside. I would be led through those huge metal doors.

                My eyes were blurry with tears; I’d been crying through almost the whole evaluation. The tears were back now, making my vision fuzzy, but it wasn’t until my step-mother turned to me after getting her coat and purse and pulled me into a tight hug that they actually fell. Hot, hot tears rolled down my face, and I could only bury my face in my step-mother’s shoulder. I didn’t let myself sob—I cried quietly, but soon enough, they wracked my whole body and I was gasping for air and letting out noisy cries. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want this. The only alternative, though, was to kill myself. I had to try this. I had to.

                I wanted to _live_. I needed to die, but I wanted to live. I was falling apart at the seams, as if my mother had cut the final thread and forced me to break into two. It was never going to end. I’d gotten out of there almost a year before and yet, she was still finding a way to get to me, even though she was four states away from me. She still knew exactly how to worm her way into my life and she knew all the right buttons to push and she didn’t even have to _speak_ to me. The fact that she still existed, that I knew it wasn’t over yet because my brother still lived with her, that she still wouldn’t acknowledge anything she did to me—it was ripping me apart. I could cut off all contact with her and still fall apart because of her.

                It just never ended. I wanted to make it end. Suicide was the only solution.

                “I love you,” My step-mother told me. It did nothing but make the tears come faster. I wished my mother loved me the way she did. I wish she’d cared for me like this. I wish she’d gotten me help. I wish she’d make things better. It didn’t feel fair. I’d been robbed of four years and it was still the thing my life revolved around.

                “I love you, too,” I said, quiet. She squeezed me, her arms tightening around me until I could barely gasp for breath, and then she released me. The evaluator nodded at me, and I couldn’t speak—I could hardly breathe. I didn’t want this.

                “It’s time.”

                He took a step forward and glanced back at me. I wiped the tears from my eyes and followed him, my hands balled into fists so tight that my nails dug into the palms of my hands. I walked just behind him, one foot in front of the other, one tile of carpeting at a time. I fixed my eyes on those locked metal doors and as the evaluator got out his key to unlock them and let us through, I glanced over my shoulder and saw my step-mother being led out, as well, through the other set of doors that led to the entryway, where she could get out to the parking lot.

                The evaluator scanned his badge, the door beeping to let him through, and I stepped through them, my feet now on the bright wood of the adult unit. I looked behind me again and watched as the doors closed being my step-mother and as the big metal doors automatically banged shut behind me, locking me in.


	4. Promises

                When I was six, I learned what the word divorce meant.

                “Are you and Dad ever gonna get divorced?”

                I had my feet pressed up against the passenger’s side window. My long hair touched the floor of the car, where I had my head hanging off the edge of the seat. I was lying backwards, my feet where my head should’ve been and vice versa. Neither my mother or I wore a seatbelt. I didn’t like the feeling of it strapping me in. The material bothered me and I didn’t like how it restricted me. My mother just didn’t believe in wearing seatbelts.

                “Where’d you learn about divorce?”

                We were stopped at a red light. The warmth of summer seeped in through the window, taking root in the soles of my feet pressed up against it and working its way through my body. I loved summer—it meant endless days of riding my bike out in the street, never really thinking or caring about anything, and afternoons of sitting in my room with the windows open and the gentle whirring of my fan blowing the pages of my book while I read. Nothing was better than the warm lull of summer. It also meant no school.

                I stretched, pushing my feet higher onto the window, reaching my hands above me and twirling my long hair through my fingers, “I dunno. Maybe at school?”

                I knew what the word ‘divorce’ meant, but like many other things, it had no real hold on me. It had a definition, but no meaning. It was when parents split up. It was when they started fighting with each other and when they started hating each other. I was worried, even if the word didn’t have meaning. Even as a six year-old, I couldn’t ignore my parents’ fighting. And they fought day and night, when they thought I was asleep and even sometimes when they knew I was awake. It was about anything and everything.

                I didn’t understand it at the time, but I knew it had to do with money. Later, I learned that money was only skimming the surface of what was going on. She'd recently began doing drugs again, after she'd quit so many years before. I had no idea what was actually going on when I was six. I thought my father was being unfair, that the fights were just about money and Mom spending too much. That's what I heard. That was the only thing they dared to fight about when I was within earshot. It was the tip of the iceberg, though, with a thousand things supporting it under the water, too far down for my six year-old mind to grasp.

                Mom's laugh brought me back into my own headspace, "No, of course not. Your dad and I would never do that to you."

                "Promise?" I asked her, glancing up and meeting her eyes. Outside, the light turned green and the car roared back to life, my mother immediately stepping on the gas, making me nearly disolve into a fit of giggles when it jolted forward and almost made me fall off the seat.

                She grinned down at me, her smile wide and reaching to her ears, "I promise."

 

 

                "This is Joey. Say hello."

                I shifted my weight from foot to foot, refusing to meet the eyes of the man in front of me. I didn't know him. I didn't want to know him. And yet, here I was, standing in the house, trying to force myself to look up at him. Joey. Joey Huls. I didn't know who he was or why we were here or even why my mother had introduced me to him.

                I'd spent all my life living in the middle-class suburban Naperville. Now, I was in the slums of Kansas City, where people lived with bars over their windows and doors and three deadbolt locks they shut every night. It was a culture shock. My mother was from Kansas and we went every year to visit her parents and family, but even they lived in a nice, little town. It wasn't like this. The house alone was one of the dirtiest I'd ever been in; every time I took a step, I could feel tiny crumbs and ashes imbedded into the fibers of the scratchy carpeting. The walls were stained with brown and red stains, and I could easily see a roach scurry under the table, piled high with dirty dishes and flies picking off the remainders of food. The backyard was a literal junkyard, filled with scrap metal from cars and trailers and whatever else Joey's brother had picked off of people.

                I learned quickly that the backyard junkyard had been accumulating for years. It was their, Joey and his brother, Don's, primary source of income. They would strip the metal and take it to sell it. Everything else they would sell at a pawn shop. I'd already been through the junkyard--At first, it'd been fun, an adventure, to play, but soon enough I was covered in scrapes and bruises and it wasn't so fun anymore. Now, I just wanted to leave.

                The man in front of me looked a lot like the house did. He was tall, taller than most men I knew, and scruffy, with a head of messy brown hair, a smile of missing and decaying teeth, and an untrimmed face stubble. The thing that struck me the most had to be his teeth. Most of his bottom teeth were missing and the ones that weren't were black and brown. He was shirtless, his chest sunburnt, and was still dressed in his work pants.

                "Hello," I finally worked up the nerve to greet him, having finally taken my eyes off the floor, instead looking up at him. Joey. I'd heard his name before, but not often enough that I could recall it. The entire trip had been strange. We went to Kansas every year to visit my mother's family in Stockton. We never went through Kansas City, though. The closest we got was Topeka and even that was to just visit my cousins at beauty school. And my dad always came with us. Always. We never made the trip without him. But this time we did, leaving him back home and going out of our way to come here, to Kansas City. It was weird and it disrupted my whole perception of the trip and I absolutely hated it.

                I was always a person of routine, which later became more prominent for me. Routine gave me structure. It was what I needed. So this, this disruption, caused a lot of chaos for me. I had prepared for the usual trip to Kansas with my father and mother, and had believed we were going to the small town my mother was from. Not here. And I didn't like it here at all. I wished my dad was with me and I honestly wondered, in that moment, what he would say if he knew where we were. Would he be happy? Upset? Dad was strict, and I'd known that as long as I could remember. He liked routine, too, just like I did. Did he know Joey?

                "Hello, there," Joey returned my greeting. Something about him made me uneasy. I couldn't quite pinpoint it at the time, being seven years old and sheltered. I couldn't even imagine living here, in this dirty house with bars on the windows. It didn't make sense to me how anyone could. I didn't like the way Joey looked. I didn't like the way he talked. And I didn't like the feeling he and the house gave off. I was uncomfortable and I hid behind my mother's leg, suddenly shy towards him. She just laughed it off and grabbed my hand, pulling and making me present myself to Joey again.

                "Joey, this is Cheyenne," She said, not giving me the chance to introduce myself. I glanced up at her and saw the way she was looking at Joey. Affection. She looked at him with everything that was missing from the way she looked at my father. Even at seven, I could understand it. I saw the love in her eyes and happiness and for a moment, I thought it was strange. I'd never seen that look in her eyes. I'd never seen her be happy.

                Joey wasn't the bad guy at first. He was genuinely nice. I spent a lot of time with him during that trip and eventually, I started to warm up to him. It took a while, though, because when I was young, I was shy. I didn't like talking to people or sharing anything about myself. I was never one to start off the conversation. Joey was shy, too, as I soon saw. He had a hard time making conversation unless he knew the person. The talking that he did so easily with my mom didn't come with me, and I found some comfort in that. Joey was an introvert and so was I. From there, things started to look up. My mom reminded me to not judge a book by its cover and I vowed not to, instead putting aside the dirty house and the mess of a junkyard behind it and the bad first impression I got.

                I came to like Joey. He was fun. He liked to play games. He was a little odd, and I later learned that he was doing hard drugs the entire time, but he was nice to me and that was honestly all I cared about.

                I feel as though I need to make it clear that at first, he was nice. He wasn't the man who later abused and neglected me. He was actually kind to both me and my mother. I ended up liking him quite a bit, though I was still unsure of my mother and his relationship. He wasn't who he became. Part of me wonders how that nice, shy man would react to the abusive asshole  he became. He was a rather righteous man. He probably would've been pissed off. If I could go back in time and tell that Joey what the present Joey was like, he probably wouldn't believe me. Who would?

                I guess that brings me back to the reason why nothing was ever done. People didn't believe me. How could they, when Joey presented as a kind religious man? Sure, he was drunk eighty percent of the time, but he was always able to pull off a kindhearted, dumb drunk face. People didn't believe how the clumsy drunk guy could beat his wife and starve his step-child when he could barely form a coherent sentence. Joey didn't give off the air of a threat. People viewed him as harmless, because that's what he wanted them to think. I fell for it, too, when I was young, and maybe, just maybe, back then it hadn't been a facade. Maybe it had been real. There's no way of knowing now.

 

                My mother broke her promise to me later that summer.

                It was when my father picked me up from a week-long girlscout camp, my first week away from home. The camp was forty-five minutes from the suburb that I lived in and I'd just spent seven nights and eight days there, a long ways from home. I'd been with other girlscouts, of course, but the homesickness started to settle in about halfway through my stay. I was happy to see my father and even though I was disappointed that my mother hadn't come as well, I ran straight to him.

                We piled all my bags and suitcases into the car and I hugged farewell to my cabinmates and friends, all while clutching my notebook full of their names and contact information. I was determined to still be friends after spending so much time together. My father and I shared chit-chat about my week and his week and I was just starting to tell my camp stories when my dad picked up his cell phone. It was a moment where the car had pulled to a stop in the line of vehicles waiting to get out of the camp. It'd come to a standstill and between listening to me babble about camp and how great of a time I'd had there, my father decided to check his messages.

                I didn't notice he was doing it until he spoke up, "Hang on a second. I have a voicemail from your mom."

                I fell silent, still grinning, as he held up the phone to his ear. The volume was turned up loud enough that I could hear every word, and the smile quickly fell from my face.

                "Dan. I won't be there when you and Chey get home. I'm leaving you for Joey."

                And with that one message, everything spun out of control.


End file.
